Pakistan Taliban hideout hit in ‘US drone attack’

A suspected US drone today fired two missiles at a hideout allegedly linked to a Taliban leader who has threatened to attack Washington.

The air strike killed 12 people and wounded several others, officials said.

The attack came a day after the Pakistani Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, claimed responsibility for a deadly attack on a police academy in the eastern city of Lahore.

Mehsud said the attack was retaliation for US missile strikes on alleged militant bases on the Afghan border.

In phone interviews with the Associated Press and local media, he vowed to launch an attack on Washington, but the FBI said he had made similar threats in the past and there was no indication of anything imminent.

A local intelligence official said the compound attacked today was in a remote area of the Orakzai tribal region, near the Afghan border, and belonged to one of Mehsud’s commanders.

Up to 30 suspected militants were in the compound when it was hit, and the Taliban have moved the dead and injured to an undisclosed location, he said.

Two other senior intelligence officials said they believed the 12 people who were killed included associates of Mehsud.

However, they added that it was difficult to confirm the exact identities of those involved because the Taliban had surrounded the area shortly after the strike.

Liaquat Ali, a government official in Orakzai, confirmed the attack but could not provide casualty figures or the identities of those targeted.

It was believed to be the first such drone strike in Orakzai, although the US is suspected of having carried out nearly three dozen other attacks near the Afghan border.

Pakistan, a key US ally, says such attacks are a violation of the country’s sovereignty and kill innocent civilians.

However, the US claims they are a critical tool for countering militants based in Pakistan who are launching attacks on US and Nato forces in Afghanistan.

Pakistan says the attacks are counterproductive because they anger local residents and generate sympathy for militants.

Mehsud has no record of striking targets abroad, although he is suspected of being behind a 10-man cell arrested in Barcelona in January 2008 for plotting suicide attacks in Spain.

Pakistan’s former government and the CIA consider him the prime suspect in the December 2007 killing of the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

The Monday militant attack on a police academy on Lahore’s outskirts killed at least 12 people, including seven police officers, and sparked an eight-hour standoff with security forces.

Analysts believe the Taliban could have carried out the raid with militants based far from the Afghan frontier.

Source:  guardian.co.uk

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